Short Story Series

Whether I had intended to at the outset or not, a number of the short stories that I have written turned out to be the beginning of a series. The subject matter of these series stories runs the gamut of all the categories that my stories fall into. This page lists all of the series, so you can dig into them easier if that’s the direction that your taste in short fiction runs. To simplify things, I’ll link to the first story in each series. From there, you can follow the link at the end of each installment to get to the others.

Maira Bundis

What if the reason it’s so difficult to take action against global climate change is that the wealthy few who control the world’s great corporations have realized that it can be even more profitable than war? In 2095, the sea wall that kept the Pacific Ocean from submerging the California lowlands all the way to Sacramento has collapsed, and the official story is that it was terrorists. What if it wasn’t? The series begins with “Bait“.

Confidence

Have you ever held your tongue when someone made an offensive remark, or yielded to an unreasonable demand just to ‘keep the peace’? Each time, you lose a bit of self-confidence, and the perpetrator is emboldened. I blogged the process of turning that thought into the first story in this series. After that, it just took off with a life of its own. The series starts with “Crossing the Line“.

Support Network

This series was inspired by the experiences of Rolling, a blogger from India. This series begins with “Unspoken“.

Riffing the Life Fantastic

What if you knew your future? That was Ben’s curse. (Mine was that I didn’t know his name until the third installment.) He’d been born with memories of the important turnings of his life, memories that had netted him several fortunes. The trick to landing his next one was to trash his motorcycle on the highway, a crash he was guaranteed to walk away from. Try explaining that to the officer. This series begins with “Riffing the Life Fantastic“.

Corporate Punishment

Several years before Mitt Romney assured us that “corporations are people, my friend,” I wrote this series in which a fictional Supreme Court granted them that Pinocchio wish. But being people cuts both ways, for they were also subject to the legal consequences of committing crimes. This series begins with “Logical Conclusion”.

Synthetic Rights Now

Why is it so easy for people to feel superior to whatever segment of humanity is unlucky enough to be ‘The Other’ this week? Maybe someday, everyone will finally get past that and treat one another as equals. Who will we pick on then? This series begins with “The A Word“.

Peacefare

Everyone’s familiar with warfare, but what’s peacefare all about? I batted the story idea around for some time before realizing that it could best be explored by some people I’d met in the course of writing my third novel, “Burnout Fever”. That book involves a few characters in a fictional activist organization called Constitutional Evolution who are exploring ways to improve the methods of governance. I figured they were up to the challenge. This series begins with “Motivation”.

Newsvlogger

The Republican Party retained control of the US House of Representatives in the 2012 elections largely through the magic of redrawing district boundaries. Gerrymandering may sound wonky, but until you know what it is and how it works, you can’t do anything to combat or eliminate the problems it causes. My problem was how to dramatize it, and what better place to start could there be than an exercise in street theater? This series begins with “Street Theater“.

After the Meltdown

I get inspiration from a lot of places, including the news, but one in particular is worth singling out. Ellen Hodgson Brown has written a killer of a book called “Web of Debt“, which explains what’s wrong with our financial system, how it got that way, and what we can collectively do about it. She also has an ongoing blog, where you can keep up on recent development and discuss them with others. In 2007, I decided to explore what might happen after this sham of a financial system has collapsed, and finished the series in 2011. The series begins with “As Is“.